


new skeletons

by soarc



Category: Westworld (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:13:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25520395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soarc/pseuds/soarc
Summary: The saloon is nothing more than a framework. A foundation with plumbing and four walls and no roof. The plywood stairs lead halfway to nothing.
Relationships: Robert Ford/Arnold Weber
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11
Collections: Rare Male Slash Exchange 2020





	new skeletons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [M J Holyoke (wholeyolk)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wholeyolk/gifts).



The saloon is bright gold with billowing dust and early sunset, the breeze swirling in ribbons of fractured light from the open windows. The empty windows, glassless, eye sockets without eyes. The saloon is nothing more than a framework. A foundation with plumbing and four walls and no roof. The plywood stairs lead halfway to nothing. No antique brass finish or fake-aged wood, like the designers’ and architects’ plans say. The bare pipes are brand new. A modern skeleton for an ancient dream: creation. History. Life beyond death.

The physical construction of the park feels far more primitive, far more primal, than the circuitry they piece together in the lab. It reminds Arnold that they’re building something real. Perhaps because he doesn’t understand it, the way he understands the robots. Tries to. Things seem simpler when you know nothing about them, than when you know almost everything.

In front of him, Robert takes off his hard hat. A few silver strands catch the light in his hair. He looks smaller, without the lab coat, without his throne of computers and controllers around him.

Arnold leaves his hard hat on. He asks, “Why did you want me out here tonight?”

“I wanted to see it myself.” Robert shrugs. “I wanted you with me.”

Robert always says these things that make perfect sense in the moment, but lose cohesion later, when Arnold remembers, when he turns them over and over and over and _over_ in his mind. Things that Arnold remembers and despairs over, because how can he create a mind as alive and true and strange as Robert’s? 

There is no replacing a human being, he’s discovered, to his shame and relief. All he can do is strive to build something new. 

Something better. Something he can’t lose.

The park is only the start of that. It’s a good start. Arnold can’t help being impressed whenever they pass through, whenever Robert drags him out for fresh air or whenever the company wants everyone along for a photo op during construction. Every time he sees it, the landscape is massively changed.

They stand silent in the skeletal saloon for a while. The sunset deepens to pink and purple. Automatic lights start illuminating the dirt road outside.

“They’re making good progress out here,” Arnold says. “I’m going to work the next few weekends, by the way.”

Robert sighs. “That’s not why I brought you here.”

“I know.”

Robert worries the work consumes him. It’s fair. It’s true. Arnold just disagrees that’s a _problem_.

“We’re ahead of schedule,” Robert says. “Even if the sponsors don’t think that’s fast enough. Don’t worry about the money.”

“I’m not worried about the money.” He doesn’t know what he’s worried about, besides failure, besides loss. He knows he can’t say it, because that will be spreading open his ribcage to bare the hollows of himself, to bare his heart trembling in the darkness. To pierce his lunges and fill them with golden dust, with all that’s left of promises.

He misses people who aren’t there. People who never were. People who are.

This morning, he and Robert dissected one of their failures. Their best yet. It didn’t have skin or eyes, just a silvery shell and fragile wires below, and when Robert moved the controls, he felt them sing back. He increased aggression, and the robot resisted. He uploaded a new database, and the robot thanked him for the knowledge. There was something he and Robert hadn’t coded, humming soft between what they had.

Arnold never said it was a success. Robert didn’t either. They’ve grown ever more superstitious, the more they push the bounds of logic. But they took extra care as they transferred the robot’s electric mind to one of the new, nearly-human body.

When they powered it on, the new body had lost that spark. It responded to their inputs, nothing more. They ripped it apart, to see what went wrong, and found nothing.

Now, dust swirls through the air, and Robert says, “I’m planning on taking a vacation next month. Just three days.”

“Good,” Arnold says. “That’s good. You need some time off. I’ll hold down the fort.”

Robert sighs again. He turns towards Arnold, with his back to the door, so he’s surrounded by a halo of golden dust and dying sunlight, and Arnold can’t read his face. “I want you to come with me. Just three days, just you and me, and I won’t let you do anything.”

“Surely I can do _something_ ,” Arnold says, his voice lowering on instinct, before he realizes what he’s saying 

Robert’s grin is brighter than the sunset.

Arnold hears, far away, the beep and rumble of trucks moving. He hears, even farther away, a piano melody and laughter, the clinking of glassware, coins on a countertop. He hears a real, living place, not this half-built skeleton they inhabit.

He hears, yet farther away, Robert’s heartbeat, even though he’s right there, and moving closer. Even though his hand closes around Arnold’s, and Arnold can feel his living pulse where their skin meets. It’s a sensation he’s felt with their projects. They have bodies that pump blood now, or a close approximation of it. Bodies with hands and wrists that give heat, that pulse with the beat of their hearts. But nothing that can take Arnold’s hand and make his stomach swoop, make his mind go blank, make the world feel all right, just for a while. 

Soon. Soon they’ll get there. But for now, Arnold thinks, this is all right. This is the one thing in this world he doesn’t want to replicate.

“If I had to choose between the work and you,” Robert says quietly. “I’d choose you.”

He doesn’t ask what Arnold would choose, and Arnold is grateful for that. They both know the answer. But it doesn’t matter, because Arnold doesn’t have to choose. He can close his eyes to the dust and the sunset. He can hold Robert’s callused hand, and lean in. 

He can kiss back, when Robert kisses him.


End file.
